On Fri, Apr 07, 2006 at 06:31:44PM -0700, Jonathan Lang wrote:
> Delimiter-terminated quotes. Really nice idea.
>
> I'd put the dot inside the comment: "#.x", with x being an optional
> quote delimiter (excluding dots). If a delimiter is included, the
> comment is terminated by the matching quote delimiter; if absent, the
> comment is terminated by the next dot.

But if one is going to go this route (and I'm not sure that we should),
then when the delimiter is absent have the comment terminate at
the first non-whitespace character.
In other words, "#" terminates at a newline, but "#.\s" terminates
at the next non-whitespace character.
This gives us:
$x#. .foo()
$x#. .()
$x#. ()
which still allows us to balance dots if we wish (but is not
required). Nicely, it still looks like we're inserting a comment,
since '#' already means 'comment'.
We can still have the delimited forms of this comment if we want,
but maybe this is a reasonable approach to handling dots.
Pm